Diabetes mellitus (abbreviated to diabetes) is the name for a group of chronic or lifelong diseases that affect the way the body uses food to make energy necessary for life. Primarily, diabetes is a disruption of carbohydrate (sugar and starch) metabolism and also affects fats and proteins. In people who have diabetes the glucose levels vary considerably being as high as 40 mmol/l and as low as 2 mmol/l. Blood glucose levels in people without diabetes vary very little, staying between 3 and 7 mmol/l. These levels follow the typical patterns shown in FIG. 1a. 
Hyperglycaemia (High Blood Glucose)
Both insulin dependant diabetes (IDDM) and non-insulin dependant diabetes (NIDDM) are associated with serious tissue complications which characteristically develop after 10-20 years duration of diabetes. Diabetic eye disease, retinopathy, is the commonest cause of blindness in western countries in people under the age of 65 years. Diabetic renal disease, nephropathy, is an important cause of kidney failure in the community. Diabetic neuropathy affects the peripheral nerves causing impaired sensation and leg ulcers, and damage to the autonomic nervous system causes postural hypertension (low blood pressure on standing) and diarrhoea. Atherosclerosis is 24 times as high in diabetic as non-diabetic people and manifest as an increased frequency of myocardial infarction heart attacks), cerebrovascular disease (strokes) and the peripheral vascular disease (causing reduced circulation to the limbs and the risk of gangrene and amputation).
For many years it has been something of an article of faith in clinical diabetes that the cause of the complications is exposure of the tissues over many years to the higher than normal blood glucose levels which have been usual in most treated diabetic patients. Conclusive proof of this theory has only recently become available; the landmark Diabetes Control and Complications Trial (DCCT) in North America was announced in 1993 and showed that IDDM patients randomly assigned to an intensive and optimised insulin treatment programme designed to produce near-normal blood glucose levels had significantly less retinopathy, kidney disease and neuropathy over a 9-year period that patients assigned to ordinary treatment (ie poor control).
The DCCT has been a major stimulus to physicians around the world to renew efforts to improve control in diabetic patients, and to develop improved methods of obtaining good control and of monitoring these patients.
Hypoglycaemia (Low Blood Glucose)
An important additional finding in the DCCT was that the frequency of hypoglycaemia was three-fold higher in the well-controlled patients than those with ordinary control. This confirms the long-standing appreciation by physicians that hypoglycaemia is extremely frequent in IDDM, and especially so in those that are well controlled. There are many reasons for this including mistiming of insulin injections and food, erratic absorption of insulin, and impaired secretion in some diabetic patients of the so-called counter regulatory hormones such as adrenaline and glucagon that oppose the action of insulin.
About one third of IDDM patients have no warning symptoms of hypoglycaemia (eg sweating, nausea, blurred vision, palpitations) and they rely on intermittent self-monitoring of blood glucose to detect dangerously low glucose levels. The consequences of hypoglycaemia include impaired cognition and consciousness, and eventually coma.
Since the late 1970's, an increasing number of diabetic patients, mostly IDDM, have been measuring their own blood glucose concentrations using finger-prick capillary blood samples. Self blood glucose monitoring (SBGM) is used by diabetics in the home to detect hypoglycaemia or hyperglycaemia and take corrective action such as taking extra food to raise the blood glucose or extra insulin to lower the blood glucose. The measurements, which are made using a low-cost hand-held blood glucose monitor (BGM), also allow the physician to adjust the insulin dosage at appropriate times so as to maintain near normoglycaemia.
BGMs use either reflectance photometry or an electrochemical method to measure the glucose concentration Reflectance photometry measures the amount of light reflected from the reagent-impregnated test strip that has reacted with a drop of blood. The operator pricks the finger of the patient or earlobe with a sterile lancet or uses anticoagulated whole blood collected in heparin and then places the blood on the test strip. The operator must place the blood onto the test strip at the time the monitor begins its timing sequence. This step is critical because under-timing (under-incubation) or over-timing (over-incubation) of the reaction may cause inaccurate measurements. At the audible signal, the operator wipes or blots the excess blood off the outside of the test strip. The operator then inserts the strip into the monitor for measurement.
In the electrochemical method a disposable single-use enzyme electrode test strip is used. When the test specimen is placed onto the test strip, an enzymatic reaction occurs that results in a current through the strip. The current is directly proportional to the concentration of glucose in the specimen.
The main disadvantages of SBGM systems are poor patient acceptance because the technique is painful, only intermittent assessment of diabetic control is possible and readings during the night or when the patient is otherwise occupied such as during driving are not possible. It is estimated that less than half of the IDDM patients in the US perform SBGM.
Further, glucose values obtained with BGMs may not agree with clinical laboratory results. Routine laboratory measurements of glucose are performed on either serum or plasma venous blood specimens that correspond with glucose concentrations measured on whole blood glucose analysers.
Whole blood glucose values are lower than those obtained from either serum or plasma. Although glucose is not a static component in human blood, changes in blood glucose concentration following food intake in normal and hyperglycaemic conditions are reasonably predictable. Similarly, the variation in glucose concentration as blood passes from arteries or capillaries to veins has also been documented. Therefore, over time, repeated measurement of blood glucose from the same patient may diverge widely. Also, blood obtained simultaneously by finger stick and venipuncture may not have the same glucose concentration. (Venous blood may contain 1 mmol/I less glucose than capillary blood if the same samples are obtained within 1-2 hours after carbohydrate intake).
Furthermore, the haematocrit of the patient (the volume of cells, mostly erythrocytes, expressed as a percentage of the volume of whole blood in a sample) influences glucose values, and whole blood glucose measurements must be corrected for this. Unfortunately, because BGMs cannot automatically correct for the haematocrit of the patient, an error of 5-15% may be introduced.
There is widespread agreement that for self-monitoring in the home the reluctant acceptance of the current finger-stick method is the main reason why the development of a non-invasive measurement technique has such high priority.
A non-invasive measurement device is known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,553,613. U.S. Pat. No. '613 describes a technique which uses the pulsatile component of the light intensity transmitted through the finger, from which to derive the glucose concentration noninvasively. It does this by using the wavelengths 805 nm, 925 nm, 970 nm and the range 1000-1100 nm. The measurements were made by transmission, ie light was passed through the finger. However, as mentioned above, U.S. Pat. No. '613 specifically relies upon the pulsatile component of the light transmitted through the patient. Such a pulsatile technique has clear disadvantages in that the pulsatile component of the light signal, whether transmitted or reflected, is less than 2% of the total signal. Thus, prior art devices which use only the pulsatile component are much less sensitive and much more vulnerable to patient movement which can cause interference which is in the order of a few hundred times the relevant signal.
Moreover, the pulsatile signal identifies arterial blood specifically. Whilst this is advantageous when considering the pulmonary circulation of a patient, it provides no information on the patient's systemic circulation which is important for glucose determination. Further, pulsatile techniques are limited to use on body extremities, eg finger, ear lobe or the ball of the foot in babies or neo-nates.